


Anything But Blue

by galateas



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 08:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 16,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/galateas/pseuds/galateas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faye Valentine at different points in her life, and the ways those points intersect</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This entire fic was inspired by this one quote: 
> 
> ”But the thought arrived inside her like a train: Marya Morevna, all in black, here and now, was a point at which all the women she had been met—the Yaichkan and the Leningrader and the chyerti maiden; the girl who saw the birds, and the girl who never did—the woman she was and the woman she might have been and the woman she would always be, forever intersecting and colliding, a thousand birds falling from a thousand oaks, over and over.”
> 
> — Deathless, Catherynne M Valente

Remember. Who are you? She begins the memory with that question, the same that began Faye Valentine when she awoke just over three years ago and decided, furiously and definitively, she was going to be the answer. But who is she really? What is the real answer to that question? She can remember before her accident now but there are too many answers all at once. Layers upon layers of them.

She is lying in the dirt - no she isn't, she is in a room on the Bebop but it's also a long-abandoned lot on a long-ruined Earth and it's also a young girl's room (her room) with walls full of thumbtack holes and a stuffed monkey looking at her from a top shelf. She can't quite tell which is the now and which is the memory from last week or even sixty years ago because all of them are jostling around in here, defying the commonly agreed upon laws of time they are meant to be abiding by. She thinks of something Spike said (her insides flip over and over like the Slinky toy she once owned clambering down the stairs into her parents' hallway): it felt like I was seeing the past in one eye and the present in the other. Layers upon layers upon layers. 

Concentrate. Who are you? Who are you in your truest form? She begins the memory with her videotape self because for months now that has been where she has been searching for answers. She is twelve in the tape. What year is this? The year before was the trip to China where she ate far too many watermelon flavor Popsicles and threw up right over the edge of the Great Wall. The year after would be when she discovered, right before the first day back at school, that she had started her period, peering at the evidence in the same detached way she watched crime scenes on the news. Twelve-year-old Faye now shuffles quite happily into view, although she is a little jittery; she is late for oboe practice (she will end up taking lessons for only a few more months before giving up because it is boring and classical and not like the instruments her favourite girl-band members play, i.e. cool). Her uniform is too big for her. Mother bought the wrong kind of socks and they keep wrinkling around her ankles (like, so annoying). Her eyebrows are terrible, like a poorly tended garden growing in all different directions, but there has been some attempt at mascara. Make-up is strictly forbidden at school but there is a fine art to applying it so it looks like you are not wearing any make-up and she hardly ever pokes herself in the eye with the applicator wand anymore. Maybe later she will find her friend Jenny and they can use Jenny's sparkly eye shadow and visit their favourite clothes store where Mrs Wong lets you try things on without buying them and take fashion show pictures in the dressing room. Although in addition to oboe she has to practice her English because her pronunciation is (direct quote from her most recent school report): 'riddled with error, despite her application of American slang being perhaps unparalleled in the class, suggesting an insatiable appetite for the consumption of Western media.' She does want to do well even though it is her worst subject alongside Arts and Crafts (which have nothing to do with applying make-up, worst luck). 'Heeey there!' she grins sloppily, in English, doing her best to sound like she could be a character on one of her beloved American sit-com shows. She waves and overhead a plane goes by, juddering like it is made of static - hang on.

Present Faye (Faye Valentine, or whoever she is) snaps back to her room. The real room, the Bebop one. It is entirely dark but for the bluish glow of the screen, the tiny plane fuzzing in the corner of it. She cannot tell how much of that was really memory and how much was just fanciful ideal. 

Layers upon layers upon layers. She knows in the deepest roots of her heart that she was once this girl, that the aqua videotape sky had once arced beyond the frame of an old Betamax player into the corners of a real life world that had not yet fallen apart, a world that had been hers. But even knowing this, she feels no closer to this girl than when she had first seen her, without remembering, on the tape. She is still a stranger, trapped in the past. Or is it that Faye is trapped in the present, unable to get to her true self behind the glass? 

This girl Faye doesn't seem trapped or frozen, the way she did before she was a real memory and was only a tape. Now she is more than pixels. But she is still not Faye Valentine, or even anywhere near her sphere. She is not flesh and blood. Instead she seems to be constructed entirely out of a kind of half-loping, half-bouncing childish joy that can exist only in the fantastical kingdom of girlhood. Long limbs folding awkwardly in and out of places. Shyness combining with noisy energy. Manifesting as something like the path of a children's party balloon which keeps bumping, gently, playfully, aimlessly, into things. It doesn't matter where she is going because though she has plenty of loved ones, she is also her own best friend. She isn't lonely even when she is alone, because inside her own mind there will seemingly always exist her familiar old world, a friendly hand in hers. This Faye has never known true betrayal or heartache and what it does to you - what it makes you do. Faye Valentine is the intruder, the faker. So why does she feel more real than this phantom child? She thinks about Dorothy in another old videotape, discovering the technicolor world of Oz, more fantastic than her own but ultimately alien and removed. It was just a dream. 

For all of this existential poking, Faye feels more splintered and dissected, as if by her old adversary Dr Bacchus and his dreadful instruments, than joined together. Layers upon layers, but how can they co-exist? It was better, in the end, making up her own answers, but now they are all she has left and they have turned out to be this huge pack of lies. A terrible hand in a card game that not even Poker Alice herself could cheat her way out of. Look how deep the layers go.


	2. Chapter 2

Faye, aged 5. Her name was Faye, she was 5, and these were the two facts about herself she could write down. Like this. My name is Faye. I am 5. She could write it really well, said her teacher. She always wrote her name so big that she ended up almost running out of paper but it made her feel important to write it down. Her name meant 'fairy'. She liked to tell people that a lot. It was even better to show you could write it. People looked at her and saw someone small, just like a fairy, but she could show them how big she was on the inside. She would press down hard and the pencil would go all wobbly but the sides of the letters were tall and strong. In her head she was casting a magic spell. It was a bit like magic, wasn't it? Making things appear. That's what she thought. Those were the kinds of things Faye, aged 5, liked to think about. That and her age. Five whole years! Some living things had only been on earth for a few hours or even a few minutes. They were learning about baby animals in school (but nobody had said where they actually came from, strangely). To those baby creatures she was really old. She felt like she had been going on forever and ever, like she was the sun. Although that was much older by squillions of years. Imagine! The sun just existing and existing all that time. 

This was her in lying in one particular stretch of the sun's existence. Faye: five; the sun: a squillion billion and something. She was absorbing its rays on her front on the garden lawn, which was freshly mown (a smell she loved - also good smells were: baking; the plastic sheeting inside her sticker books; her mother wearing perfume on evenings out, leaning over to tuck Faye into bed before she left). Inside, her name was on the living room wall (hanging there on a piece of paper, not on the actual wall. It was bad to do that, to draw on the wall. She had done it once and had not been allowed pencils or pens or anything like that for an entire whole week. Not very long compared to the sun, but long enough). She'd done this version in red crayon and it was one of the best ones because it didn't even go that wobbly at all. She was trying to do another one for Grandma, who liked this very much, but it was hard doing this on the grass, which was really bumpy, and beetles and ants and other creepy crawlies kept going on the paper and even under her clothes! Also it was hot. She looked up at the sky (but not right at the sun, which was so shiny it could make you blind, which meant not being able to see). There were no clouds, that was why, and since the sun was (really!) just a giant enormous ancient ball of fire that meant it might burn them. Luckily they had umbrellas. She tried to go back to her writing but gave up because now she had ripped a little hole in it. She wanted an ice cream. Where were the grown ups? Over there on the wicker garden chairs, talking about grown-up things. They were also older than her and just as hard to grasp as any ball of fire in the sky. 

When they saw her coming, Mama and Grandma stopped arguing and Mama agreed she would get Faye an ice cream because she had been working so hard on her writing. Grandma looked at the torn paper while Mama went inside and said even though it had the hole she really loved it because it had personality, meaning it reminded her of Faye. 

Faye beamed. She always liked to please Grandma, who didn't seem to mind as much when she did things a bit wrong. Grandma actually had a saying about it:

"If there’s one thing the women on this side of the family are good at, it’s making a great deal of noise."

It wasn’t the same thing as a family motto. They didn’t have one of those. But Grandma would say it as if it were something shiny that had been passed from hand to hand over the years, all so you could one day pin it proudly on your chest and take your turn to prove for yourself how true it was.  
She said it every time Faye made what other people might frown at and call a fuss.

“What a fuss,” sighed her Mama just five minutes later, the frown tucked into in her perfect eyebrows. She pulled at the front of Faye’s yellow flowery sundress (the one that was meant to be for special occasions but Faye had insisted on wearing it, she wouldn't get it dirty, promise!) and rubbed at the stain that had not so long ago been the ice cream clutched in Faye's small, sweaty hand. Faye wailed loudly again, pressing her hand against Mama's shoulder and hopping on one leg.

“Another one! Get me another one!” Faye knew she was making a lot of noise. Mama did nothing except to tut and push away her sticky paw, which meant she was trying not to lose her temper. Faye tried to sound more polite, which Mama liked her to be. “Mama! Mama, please!"

“She did say please,” said Grandma from her sun chair, where she had been looking at them from over the top of a newspaper. “That needs more spit, by the way.”

“She’s still not asking nicely, she’s shouting and it’s rude and horrible.” Faye’s mother spat daintily into a handkerchief and rubbed some more. Faye tried to stop crying. She tasted salt and felt all gloopy like a silly baby. She looked at the sky again. There were still no clouds, and the leaves on all the neatly kept plants were shining bright as coins. 

“Pah! Nothing wrong with shouting if it gets you heard!" said Grandma quite cheerfully. "Isn’t that right, my little fairy? My little Faye-Faye? What do I always say?”  
Mama moved her eyes gently upwards in a way that wasn’t as rude as when people rolled their eyes (she hated when people did that) but was still really quite close to that. Grandma pretended she had not seen this and kept talking. "If there’s one thing the women on our side of the family are good at, it’s making a great deal of – now, what was it?”

“Noise!” bellowed Faye, demonstrating beautifully. She brightened as Grandma smiled and patted her own lap, readying the spot so it would be just right for a small girl’s bottom to perch there. Faye wriggled free of Mama and clambered aboard. 

“Right. Noise. We’re especially noisy.” Grandma brushed Faye’s fat tears away. "Now, sometimes it’s good to listen, of course it is. At the moment you are making a noise for no good reason, but that’s why I’m telling you now. Learn the right times to be noisy and you'll go far."

“Don’t encourage bad manners.” Faye thought her mother sounded a little bit upset, but was trying not to sound that way at all. She was picking up little bits of broken cone from the lawn and wrapping them in her handkerchief.

“Oh, really, I’m not. I don’t mean to dismiss your parenting style, Angela. I know you’re best at being a nice dainty Lady – oh, don’t look like at me that, I’m not insulting you – you’re best at that, and maybe our little fairy here will be good at it too. But I can see she has a temper like her grandma and I want her to know it worked out for me just fine.” She turned back to Faye. “Say sorry to your mama. She is right, you know. It was your fault you dropped the ice cream. Don’t worry about a silly little accident. You’ll only make everyone angrier and then nobody wins.”

Faye sniffed. She made her smeary, ice cream mouth into a neat little shape and breathed out what was just about, “sorry.”

“We can’t hear you. Say it so we can hear you.”

“Sorry! Sorry.”

Mama looked shocked but maybe, just maybe, a bit pleased too. “You’re so bossy. Isn’t your grandmother bossy, Faye?”  
Grandma winked. “Exactly. And it gets me the results I need. Always has."

There was a silence in which Faye watched Mama think quite hard about this, before she smiled a funny sort of smile and looked down at the messy handkerchief in her hands. “I suppose I’ll go inside to throw this away and get you another ice cream, then, Faye dear.”

The two of them watched her go, all her snowy fabrics swirling about as she did so. She looked like a swan, Faye thought. Pretty Mama. Gentle swan Mama. 

“You don’t take after her at all,” said Grandma thoughtfully. “Her mother - that was your other grandmother, sweetie, you never knew her - she was the same. Very dainty, never raised her voice.”

“The princesses in stories, they never shout either." Faye imagined one of her bedtime story books, and the pictures she looked at over and over. Tall, pale ladies with long hair and colourful jewels on their clothes. They always smiled so prettily, the same polite way Mama did. “Mama is like a princess, I think. Sleeping Beauty is my favourite!” She slurped thoughtfully on her pinkie finger, where she had found some ice cream slowly dripping down towards her wrist.

"Yes, well. Princesses are all very well but they never get the best adventures." Faye thought about this and decided it was true, but they still had nice hair and dresses. She was in a tower wearing a swirly gown and brushing her hair and singing when she realised Grandma was still talking and they were back in the garden. "But I did once – only once, mind you - see your Mama get very, very angry. It was before you were born. Some awful man at a party, one of those old-money types he was, he called her a trophy wife."

Faye pulled her finger out of her mouth. It made an ugly sucking noise, the kind Mama would not like her to make.

“Well, I suppose you’re too young to know what that means. But what he meant was that she didn’t really love your Papa, which just isn’t true. You should have seen the look on her face. I thought she would slap him.” Grandma told this part of the story very heartily. “Oh, but you mustn’t slap, not really.” She was still smiling slightly, but she sounded more serious now. There were speckles on her lined face, tiny spots of sunlight shining through the holes in her straw hat. She was thinking about something Faye couldn't see. “Anyway, the point is, you still take after me more than anyone, my little fairy. My pesky little fairy Faye. I’m glad of it. You can take care of yourself. But there is such a thing as too much trouble. Don't be unkind, because you should take care of others as well as yourself.”

Faye arranged her face into a very satisfied, chubby grin. She had stopped properly listening and had spotted something more important. "Mama’s back with my ice cream,” she announced. 

Grandma sighed once and slapped her gently on the rump, nudging her onto the grass. “Alright. Go and get it, then. Remember what I said, though. Don’t pester Mama for things so much, she spoils you enough as it is.” 

“Ye-e-e-e-s-s-s!” called Faye, breaking out into a run, and her feet pedaling and hitting the ground made the noise rattle in her throat, a tiny war cry as she charged forth to claim her prize.

This was Faye, five years old and immortal.


	3. Chapter 3

“You have got to be kidding me!”

The rage was all she was. She felt the force of it explode in her, and it seemed too big to be anything this pale, thin body that was apparently hers could possibly generate. It didn’t seem to fit at all. She had only just gotten used to using all her limbs, which had been docile for so long, but now they seemed out of her control again, forcing some arbitrary path as she occupied as much space as possible, making room for the rage and smashing anything unfortunate enough to get in its way. The rage was all she was. Perhaps that was it was. She had been this dormant volcano all along, trapped in some fragile vessel, until she could do nothing but erupt outwards.

“Please, Miss Valentine, try to stay calm!” she heard Dr Bacchus call from somewhere far away, but now it seemed unthinkable that she had ever listened to anything he had ever told her. She had sat in this damn clinic for months, letting him poke at her with monitors and stethoscopes and thermometers and things she didn’t even recognize, all because she had thought she didn’t have a choice. She had just been a body, anyway. Just a body with no personality, no identity, no reason to object. Suspended like a specimen behind glass, even after she had been unfrozen. But now this feeling had ruptured out of some place she couldn’t name, and it was her entire self. The rage was all she was, and you couldn’t poke at it or measure it and you definitely couldn’t tie it down. She pushed out another wave of it in a wordless cry and grabbed a glass test tube from a tray, flinging it against the wall next to his terrified face. She watched it shatter while he ducked swiftly out of the way, and found she wasn’t the slightest bit satisfied. She could see the computer, the damn computer with its screen full of Whitney’s debts – her debts. They were ugly red marks, grinning at her in the same smug way this so-called doctor and his accomplice nurse had been doing all along. The way, she could see now, Whitney had been looking at her all along as well. She turned on it.

“Not the computer! Please! Miss Valentine!” Dr Bacchus yelped, lurching forward even as the nurse took shelter, whimpering, under the desk. She had the right idea. Faye kicked at Bacchus as hard as she could, which wasn’t very hard, but her foot made contact with his groin and then her arm came wheeling out of nowhere and she had suddenly hit him over the head as well. She hadn’t even meant to do that. The doctor made a sound like a car tire losing all of its air at once and flopped to the floor, deflated. She didn’t stop to see what he did next, because she had to get to the computer. She could also see that the nurse had stretched her hand from underneath the desk and was pawing away blindly for the phone on top of it.

“No you don’t!” Faye snatched at the offending item and cracked it against the linoleum floor with all her might. The nurse gave another whimper. Her hair was unfurling from its neat arrangement of clips and ribbons on either side of her head, as if trying to escape. Faye gave one harsh laugh at this, more like a bark than anything, and shoved at the computer, pushing it backwards off the desk so that it met its doom in a shower of sparks. This was met with the loudest whimper yet.

“Oh, shut up,” Faye snarled. She spun wildly around so she could address the both of them. Dr Bacchus was still on the floor. He was cradling his broken glasses in one hand and the tender spot her foot had made contact with in the other. Suddenly she was terrified, because she had no idea what she was meant to do after this, but she had so much momentum going now that she didn’t think she could just stop. She filled her chest and bellowed, “You sorry pieces of shit! That’s what you are! Goddamn worthless pieces of trash!” It was lava heaving out of her. Hot tears were beginning to pool in her eyes. She blinked them back so that she could see her victims’ fear, and banged her fist on the desk. “This is what you did to me! This is how you made me feel! Well, how does it feel now? Doesn’t it just feel so goddammned unfair? Doesn’t it make you just want to scream?” She really didn’t know what to do. She didn’t have a clue who she was. She didn’t know of anybody who could help her. Whitney was dead, at least officially (she didn’t know what to believe anymore), and as if that wasn’t bad enough, the last thing he had pulled before his whole disappearing in a ball of fire act had been to scam the living daylights out of her. She was ridiculously in debt with no way to pay up and there was no way out of this place. All she could do was hurl insults at her tormenters. She saw Bacchus wordlessly slide his glasses back on, glancing at his co-worker so that they glinted in that ghastly way she hated, and Faye wanted to rip them off again, but then her eyes found something else. On the metal tray where she had found the test tube lay the one instrument in the room she could truly understand, glinting sharply, almost beautifully. All at once, her ticket out of here. The answer, just like that, rearing out at her through her own frenzy, so simple and so, so terrible.

But Bacchus had seen it too, and he was rising to his feet, and the rest of it was so instinctive she barely felt herself move before she had her fist curled around the needle’s shaft and the beautifully sharp point of it was poised, quivering, in his face.

“I don’t know what’s in this,” she said quietly, both because her throat was now very dry and because she thought it sounded appropriately threatening, “but I’m hoping it’s something really damn dangerous. Turn around. Hands in the hair.” Dr Bacchus did not need telling twice. He rotated, trembling, so that he faced his terrified nurse, with his palms spread in hopeless surrender. Faye positioned the needle’s point right above his jugular. She had seen this in some movie, but she couldn’t tell if the memory was from before or after her accident. “Try pulling any kind of funny shit,” she told the nurse, “and, well, just see if you can guess how our good friend Dr Bacchus here is gonna end up. Now first tell me how much damage this stuff can do.”

“Please,” trembled Bacchus, “please, you don’t know what you are doing.”

“I didn’t ask you,” Faye snapped, putting her face very close to his, “did I?”

“N-no. Please.”

Faye barked with laughter again. “Oh, I love it when you beg.” She felt hysterical, but this bullshit she was coming out with - it was just floating calmly from her. “Do it again.”

“Please! Please.”

“Pathetic.” Her mind was racing. The door was right behind her. The last time she had tried to escape, the alarms had gone off and they had been onto her in no time. Although she might have gotten away then if it weren’t for Whitney showing up in that obnoxious convertible (good riddance to it, by the way, she hoped it had burned to a crisp by now).

“Tell me how you disable the alarm system,” she commanded the nurse, pointedly repositioning the needle a fraction in case anyone needed reminding what disobeying her meant. 

“I – I don’t know. That’s not up to me. The whole security system is based on an entirely different floor. Look, if you just put that down and co-operate with us now, honey, I’m sure we can work something out together.” Her voice was wheedling, the kind of tone a camp leader might use on a disobedient girl scout. It made Faye want to scream again.

“No! Shut up!” Shit. She didn’t think she could drag a hostage all the way to another floor. She hadn’t scoped out any possible camera locations before her last escape attempt, she had simply gone straight out the window, and the risk of running into who knows how many people in the clinic’s labyrinth of corridors was too big anyway, not to mention she had this awfully coiffed woman to deal with. Then she’d have to figure out security when she got there. Shit, they were probably onto her already, someone must have heard the noise, and it would be a miracle if she had less than a minute left. She had no chance with this measly weapon any more. Not unless she just bolted for it, and who cared about the alarm system. She was all out of options, so she would just have to count on being faster than them.

They were on the ground floor. She could do it. Faye looked at Dr Bacchus again, at his horrible hateful face, and perhaps it was knowing that was she was about to do was so reckless anyway, damn it all to hell, but she was suddenly moving at breakneck pace and feeling the needle puncture his sorry neck with all the purpose she had, and he was stumbling and gasping away from her, and she had just enough time to see his eyes wide and shining white as moons behind his glasses, boring into her, before the nurse began screaming and screaming, so shrill and awful - or was that the alarm? And she was running, but her legs felt heavy and so did everything inside her, so the only thing keeping her moving was that terrible rage, the only thing that defined her as something other than a passive lab experiment or a con-man’s easy prey. She was running like something hunted, but she had just maybe killed a man and however appalling it was, her rage had found a purpose and she was feeling the power of it surge through her.

So she kept running. She was still wearing her evening gown, she realized, and had one hand elegantly gloved. The skirt was too tight around her knees, but the seam was beginning to tear and at least she could feel it getting looser. There were figures chasing her, but she had made it out of the clinic into the night outside, and the surrounding woods were swallowing her up. She darted, half-blind, through trees, until she had to stop on account of the fire in her lungs and her legs. Oh, her legs. They were clunking around beneath her, useless in their lack of muscle. The only thing they knew how to do properly was lie still and walk short distances, and at having to run, they were making their protest known loud and clear. She felt, too, a splintering pain in her ankle. She had twisted it, maybe even dislocated it. Shit. She leaned against a tree and tried to listen for signs of pursuers or the road that would lead to freedom, but all she could hear was her own lungs forcing painful bursts out of her and then raking in fresh air. Her head felt too hot, so that she half expected to start whistling like a kettle. She closed her eyes, but all in a rush she thought she saw the twin moons behind Dr Bacchus’ glasses looming out at her and she was throwing up, doubled over in the dark. The taste was so bitter. What had she done? What was she doing? She tugged her remaining glove off and wiped her mouth. Shit. And when did she start swearing so much? It was one of those things she just knew how to do, like driving a car, without remembering where she had ever learnt it, but until today she had not put the skill to use. She thought about when she had held Bacchus hostage, had known what to do then too. Was this the kind of person she had been, finally coming to light? Or was this some brand new creature being born? There were always so many questions and she was sick of them.

Her thoughts, having no place else to go, turned to Whitney. She had thought that being with him had been the way to bring out her true self, but it seemed like everything she had felt then had been what he had taught her. Look at this, isn’t it great? I just love this, don’t you? You look great in that, you should wear it more often. What do you say? She had agreed shyly with everything he said. She had worn the clothes he bought her; was wearing, right now, the dress he had given her for their date earlier that night (the skirt had torn completely by this point so that it was ruined forever – good). She had even slept with the creep because she hadn't known what sex felt like, or did but had forgotten, and wanted him to show her (the results of this experiment had been overwhelmingly disappointing). If she liked something, it was because of him, and the same if she didn't. She had wanted so much to be someone that she had let him decide who that was for her. And that person was apparently the world’s biggest sucker.

Well, she wasn’t a sucker anymore. Faye made her heart a fist, refusing to cry. She was a fugitive now, sure, but she wasn’t going to get caught. She was in so much pain she could barely see straight, but she wasn’t going to waste a tear on him or any of these bastards from here on out. She didn’t have a clue who she was, but maybe starting from scratch wasn’t such a bad thing, as long whatever person she became after this belonged to her. She could have been a good or bad person before, it didn’t matter, but just now she had taken a grown man hostage and maybe even killed him. That was unquestionably a bad thing to have done, but – and the thought thrilled her - it was also all hers. 

She straightened up from the tree and started walking.


	4. Chapter 4

Looking at 10-year-old Faye was looking at something of a contradiction. She was always dressed beautifully, but the effect was spoiled (most adults told her) by knees that appeared always, without fail, to be covered in scrapes and grazes. Well. She liked to climb. Climbing tended to involve a lot of falling. And that was that, none of your business, so there. It hurt, but only a bit, and she considered these injuries important maps of the routes she had taken on her various adventures. And she was at that stage where her favourite heroines were the ones who would commandeer pirate ships or gallop around on horses but at the end of the day would scrub up beautifully and arrive at the ball, blooming in pretty pastels and with the outdoors fresh on their faces, to claim their crown or their prince, or both. So the beautiful clothes had to stay too. 

The thing about running around like that in lots of expensive clothes, though, was that people tended to think of you as spoiled. Especially when you were getting the clothes replaced all the time. She tried to explain it to her friends when they got jealous or impatient. It was just like a story of her own. Once upon a time there was a poor young man. The man, her father, had come to Singapore when he was still young, determined to make something of himself. He had started at the bottom, working his way up until he had built an entire electronics empire from scratch, as well as a lovely new house he had designed himself, to live in with his mother, Faye's grandmother. After that he had met a poor, sick, but beautiful young woman, Faye’s mother, and vowed upon marrying her they would have everything. But it seemed there was one thing they might not be able to have. For a long time nobody believed they would be able to have a baby, because her father was older than her mother, who also had some kind of blood disease Faye couldn’t pronounce or spell but knew looked very ugly when written down and very pale when worn by her mother. Her parents had worried that Faye would be born the same. They were blessed to have conceived a child in the first place, had tried for so long, and it seemed too good to be true that the child would also turn out healthy. But Faye had stubbornly grown in perfect condition, and now they were determined to keep her that way. They had everything after all. The thing was that her father was always off trying to make more money and her mother wasn't very good at saying no to her darling girl even while she tried to protect her, so Faye was used to getting and doing whatever she wanted (unless Grandma intervened, or the school contacted Father and he got really angry at her). It was only her fault a little bit, you see. The End. 

“You’ve never had anyone say no to you,” Jenny Chua was whining, sticking out one foot so that she could compare her scuffed shoe against Faye’s gleaming new pair. Lunchtime break had just begun and now that lessons were out of the way, there were important things to be discussed. Jenny Chua was Faye's best friend forever, cross their hearts and hope to die, which was what they almost believed would happen if either of them removed the woven bracelets wound around their respective wrists. Even if they got dirty and bits of dead leaves and stuff got stuck in them. You just never took a relic of such importance off. You would almost certainly be cursed, or something else bad. That was The Rules of the friendship bracelet. 

“It’s because I don’t let them,” Faye retorted, and gave a little spin the way she had seen catwalk models do it. Jenny scowled and Faye stuck out her tongue. “I’m kidding, Jell-o. I didn’t even ask for these shoes, Mother just said I needed them.” She ducked deftly out of the way of a stray football and the frenzied boy that followed in pursuit. The schoolyard was dangerous if you didn’t keep your wits about you.

“Hm,” said Jenny, “you could have said no.”

“Would you have said no?”

“…S'pose not.”

Faye sighed happily, clicking the soles together and feeling like all she needed was a basket and Toto the dog. “Look how pretty they are. Oh, whoops, I’m a pain, aren’t I? Sor-ee! Hey, you can have my old ones, Jell-o, I only got those a month ago. They have kind of a scrape on them from when I was climbing that tree, you know, the big one in the park, but you can barely even see! Mother just gets so picky about things, that’s why she said I needed new ones. Boy, was she disappointed when she saw, you should have been there, and she was fussing and fussing about how I could have hurt myself. Like, as if I haven’t climbed a stinking tree before!” She paused, treading carefully. Her friend’s mother was a good deal less protective, which was probably the biggest source of Jenny’s jealousy, even though Faye thought that must be way less annoying. “Come on. Don’t look so green.” Jenny was still scowling, but she didn’t turn down the offer. “A big green wobbly plate of jell-o.” Jenny hit her playfully started to laugh, Faye taking her hands and dancing her around in a circle. Unfortunately, neither of them noticed that someone was in their way until it was too late, and they collided awkwardly and painfully. 

“Hey! Watch out! Oh, it’s you shitheads. Course it is.”

Worst luck. The someone in question was Jennifer T, as in, now they were in Trouble. Of the three Jennifers in school, she was the only one Faye had not befriended. It was for good reason. She didn’t really like to pick fights if she could help it, but Jennifer T, taller than anyone in their class and don’t you ever forget it, most certainly did. She had what everyone called a ‘troubled past’, but something about her just made Faye’s temper flare dangerously. Probably the fact she was a giant bully who used her stature (and the fact she knew more swearwords than most ten-year-olds) to intimidate anyone who dared get on her nerves. And the fact that she couldn’t intimidate Faye got on her nerves more than anything.

“Sorry, Jennifer,” Faye pronounced very deliberately as she rubbed her throbbing shoulder, trying her hardest not to sound insulting, and failing at the last moment, “but clearly it was an accident.” 

Beside her, Jenny Chua stiffened. Jennifer T rubbed her own side. “You brat. Shut up. You so did that on purpose.” She paused, and added, “Shithead,” as an afterthought. It was her favourite new swear, although Faye had heard worse on late-night TV and even occasionally from her own grandmother.  
“I so,” Faye breathed, “did not.”

“Oh, did so,” and Jennifer T grinned the kind of grin that meant she had decided for sure this was going to be a fight. Great. “You shoved me. You shoved me cause you think you own this school, you and your new shit you have all the time. Those things new, by the way? Yeah, I saw them this morning. So shiny!” Suddenly she raised her foot, and Faye yelped indignantly as she brought it down hard onto one of the beautiful shoes. “Let’s wear them in, shall we? Oh look, now they’re ruined. Whoops. So, still think you’re in charge?”

“And you think you are instead, that it?” muttered Faye, standing on one foot to massage her toes and willing herself to ignore the taunts. She could feel good old Jell-o living up to her name, quivering beside her and willing the same thing. She glanced at her friend with jaw clenched, as reassurance. This wasn’t worth it. But their tormenter saw the look.

“And what’s up with you, squirt?” Jennifer had always particularly despised pint-sized Jenny Chua, as if outraged someone so weak and cowardly would dare have the same name as her. It was one reason why nobody ever called Jenny by her full name. “Too wet to say anything? Can’t even stick up for your so-called friend? Don’t blame ya, really, she clearly thinks she’s better than you with your shitty shoes.”

Faye’s hackles rose. Now this was something else. “Ok, look, do what you want to me, but leave her alone,” she said firmly. This made Jennifer laugh.  
“Why do you care about old shitty-shoes anyway?” she said, and shoved Jenny hard.

“Stop!” Faye was seething. “Leave her alone!”

“Make me.” She gave Jenny another push. The poor thing was just taking it, staring hard at the ground in resignation. “Look at her, she’s used to getting shoved around. If it’s not me, it’s you. You make her worship you all the time. You’re just as bad.”

The words churned nastily in Faye’s gut. “No.”

“Uh-huh.” Shove.

“Leave her alone.”

“I said make me.” Shove.

“Leave. Her. Alone.”

“Nope! Don’t think so!” Shove.

“Leave! Her! ALONE!” Shove, but this time it was Faye barreling into Jennifer T, all five foot four of her, and they both smacked onto the hard asphalt, the skin of Faye’s knees scraping against it like cheese on a grater. Her mother would be distraught, especially if left a mark. There was no time to assess for bleeding, though, because she was hitting Jennifer over and over as hard as she could, and Jennifer was hitting her back with savage little grunts while in the background a gleeful crowd was gathering and cheering them on, or in the case of a few pacifists, namely Jenny Chua, begging them to stop. 

“Little – ugh! – bitch – ha!” Jennifer wrestled herself from under her and pinned her arms to the floor, but Faye kicked upwards frantically and with all her might, until one of her shiny new shoes collided oh so perfectly with the very middle of Jennifer T’s stomach, and all the wind was knocked out of it with a satisfying whoof. A cheer erupted through the crowd as Jennifer rolled away, groaning. Faye scrambled to her feet.

“You don’t know shit!” she screamed.

And of course it was in the very moment that these words were ripping out of her that she felt a firm grip on her shoulder, one that could only have belonged to her teacher. 

She went peacefully, and not without some regrets, but only after she had turned to Jenny Chua and the rest of them to say, with triumph loudly rattling in her voice, “I told you I never let anyone say no to me.”

 

***  
“It’s your fault,” Faye heard Father say to Grandma, much later on when Faye was meant to be in bed. “You taught her those swear words. You’re always telling her to go looking for trouble!”

“I only tell her to stick up for herself,” retorted Grandma, “She wasn’t seeking out trouble. And if she does, it’s on you. You’re the one that spoils her rotten so that she’s only used to getting her way. You’re wondering why she doesn’t work hard enough and gets into fights, well, that’s why! If you paid more attention to her, real attention, instead of handing her everything and then holing up back in your office, she might be a little less wayward.” There was a clatter that might have been a plate. “Look at you! You only pay attention to her when you’re telling her off. She probably does it just so you notice.” 

Faye, sitting secretly at the top of the stairs, did not have to strain her voice to hear any of this. Her grandmother was, as she always proudly proclaimed, a very loud woman. Father had also inherited this trait. She gripped the cool brass curves of the banister with one hand and used the other to take a bite of the chocolate she had taken from the secret emergency stash in her room. She was meant to be in there now, not listening to the adults arguing, but she knew they were talking about her. How was she meant to resist that? She would be in even more trouble if she were discovered, especially in possession of something as incriminating as the chocolate (now starting to melt all over her fingers), but that was part of the thrill. 

“You think you’re wise because you’re so old,” came Father’s voice from the square of light downstairs. “Well, I’m not taking advice from you! Don’t argue with me about this. You’re always telling her to kick up a fuss instead of just keeping her head down and getting on with it. You were the same with me when I was a boy.”  
“And now you’re CEO of your own company. You’re welcome.” 

“I’m CEO because I work hard, like Faye should be doing. Not running around picking fights like you tell her to!”

“Oh, what a load of junk. Don’t tell me you’ve never negotiated with someone in those meetings of yours.”

“Negotiated, yes. Fought, no.”

“Same difference. Like I said, I only tell her to stick up for herself. That’s what I wanted for you, that’s what got you so far in life – you and me both - but you’re determined to keep her in an ivory tower, aren’t you? Pah!”

Faye looked at her knees, and the Band-Aid Mother had plastered on one of them earlier. She was used to Grandma and Father arguing. They argued about her a lot, and always said the same things. She wondered where Mother was – probably where she always retreated to during these incidents, which was bed. It made Faye feel bad that she upset people, especially Mother, but she didn’t really do it on purpose. She was just a free spirit, you see, like a pirate queen riding the waves. 

“If you’re accusing me of causing trouble, you’re very wrong, because you scared that out of me as a child. I only got so far in life because I was frightened to achieve anything less!”

Grandma did something that made a very loud clattering noise. “You make me sound like an old hag. I wasn’t that frightening. Well, anyway, you are! You are frightening! As soon as Faye does anything you don’t like, you try and make her feel terrible about it. You’re just afraid of women being louder than you, that’s all. That’s why you married Angela, isn’t it?”

Faye gripped the banister much tighter. She knew something bad was happening. Grandma had never said anything like that before.  
“Don’t,” barked Father, “bring Angela into this! You know, she’s lying down right now because she’s so exhausted trying to take care of all the people in this family. It only makes her feel worse. She tries damn hard but you call her a pushover because she can’t possibly tame you and your little protégée from her damn sick bed!” There was a scraping noise, which Faye recognized as him getting up from his chair. 

There followed a silence that gaped like a bullet hole. Then, “You’re right,” said Grandma, much more quietly. “I’m sorry. I don’t give her enough credit. Or you. I am proud of you, you know that.” 

“Well, you’ve got a damn funny way of showing it,” snarled Father. There was another pause. Faye felt scared, suddenly. And horribly, horribly guilty. 

“I just worry about Faye,” he said after a time, softer like Grandma. “Maybe she does let me down on purpose.” Let me down? Faye looked at the empty chocolate wrapper and wished she hadn’t just eaten all of its contents. She didn’t feel quite so much like a pirate queen just then. 

“I worry about her too. I just want to take care of her better.” Another pause. “I wish you would too.”

Father seemed to have decided the conversation was over, however, as this time the silence remained unbroken. Faye knew he was going to stay downstairs for a long time after this, probably smoking his cigar in that way that meant everyone had to leave him alone. But she could hear Grandma starting to come into the hall. For some reason Faye couldn’t move. Grandma looked up, straight into her wide eyes, and she felt like a baby animal caught in a tree.  
Grandma didn’t say anything. She just came up the stairs with her house slippers shushing against the carpet, gently took the wrapper Faye was crinkling tightly in her hand, ruffled her hair, and gave her a look that seemed very meaningful. Her skirt brushed against Faye’s cheek, soft as a ghost, as she passed by. Then she was gone, and Faye was alone on her perch again. 

She stared into the hallway for a long while. In the dark of the night, the shapes that were usually familiar looked strange and shadowy, but it definitely didn’t feel like an adventure this time. Something about Father’s voice had shaken her, and for the first time Faye thought that she understood what Grandma meant. Then she started to think about Jennifer T, and what she might think of their family. Jennifer T had spent most of her life in care, because her own parents were dead – well, this was technically a rumor, but everybody knew it was true. It wasn’t an excuse for bullying, of course. Faye still felt angry when she thought about Jennifer pushing her friend around. But she could see, now that she wasn’t so absolutely livid, how it might feel for someone with dead parents to watch a girl like her in the big house on the hill, running around getting whatever she wished for. She wanted very much, all of a sudden, to let Jennifer know that it wasn’t all it cracked up to be. She wanted to say she was sorry.

It seemed like the kind of thing Grandma would do. It seemed like the kind of thing her father wouldn’t bother with. The difference between those two, she thought as she padded back to her room, was that Grandma wanted to help people, and her father wanted to control them. Well, she didn’t want him to buy her love anymore if it was just another way for him to get what he wanted. She didn’t want to be selfish like him. From now on she was going to be kinder, or else there was no reason to be proud of what you had, was there?

When she got to her room she decided not to read her usual book. Instead, she stood on a chair to reach the top drawer of her closet, where she pulled out a pad of notepaper and one of her favourite pens. The notepaper had sheets of all different colours, so she chose the pink because she thought it matched the pen and was quite a peaceful sort of colour. It matched her friendship bracelet, too. She sat down at her desk.

'Dear Jennifer', she began in her very best handwriting, 'I wanted to tell you I was sorry about today, and about a lot of other things…'


	5. Chapter 5

She had decided not to be scared, but it wasn’t really that simple. The adrenaline she had been riding on was starting to wear off, and now she was back to feeling as lost as ever, only this time there wasn’t anyone to explain what she should do.

The easiest part was over, but even that had been hard. Once she had found the road she had managed to hitch a ride pretty quickly, in a clunky old ship that wouldn’t have been her first choice of transport (she still wasn’t used to flying and felt comfortable only in the familiar seat of a car), but then she didn’t have a choice, did she? The guy had asked where to and all she’d said was, “far away from here,” and hoped to high heaven that she could trust him to get her somewhere safe. She didn’t want to trust him. He looked like your typical shifty guy with a beard and a hat pulled low over his eyes, shading them despite the fact there was no sun. He had kept looking over at her in her torn dress in a way she hated, and she met all his questions with the curtest answers possible. He’d seemed pretty annoyed that she had said almost nothing the entire journey, which lasted agonizingly long, but her gamble had paid off and sometime early in the morning she had him pull up into a small town, where he let her go on her way without giving her any kind of grief about it. This felt like a small miracle, and she was relieved about it, but there was also a part of her that felt sick with helplessness at having been so completely at someone else’s mercy. The guy could have been anyone. She didn’t want to rely on chance like that again any time soon. Next time, there might not be a next time.

Her only options in the town were a motel and a bar that were both open into the small hours. The motel had an ATM outside, and Faye knew she could use her thumbprint to access Whitney’s accounts from there and withdraw whatever cash he might have left, but it didn’t feel worth it. Her whereabouts could be tracked that way, and all she would get from it were a few measly woolongs anyway. She wished that she had thought this through more, had stuck it out in that ship at least until sunrise. Where would she stay without money? All she had now was the bar. She supposed that, at the very least, she might be able to get some water for free.

The bar was mostly dead inside. The overhead strip lights seemed to have broken so the only source of light was a television set that was silently and jerkily playing some show that involved a man and a woman dressed as cowboys and gesturing excitedly at her. That and the coolly glowing fridges behind the bar, throwing eerie blue squares over the empty tables, like light from a UFO. The entire placed smelled like damp wood, of floorboards soaked in beer. There were a few characters in there, lurking in the corner where the light barely reached them, who looked like they would have been friends with her road trip buddy and had almost the exact same beards. One of them had his head on the table and was snoring gently. The only other customer was a guy seated at the bar with very shiny slicked-back hair and a thin gold chain at his throat. As Faye stepped over the threshold, all but the sleeping figure craned round to look at her and she heard a faint whistle from the shadowy corner. She approached the bar as steadily as she could, hoping that it was too dark for anyone to see her shaking legs.

“Hey, beautiful! All dressed up and nowhere to go? Huh?” a crackly kind of voice drifted over from the dreaded corner and dissolved into a hacking cough. It was met by a chorus of further laughter and whistles. Faye focused very hard on reaching the bar, finally lurching to her destination and gripping the edge of it roughly. Hell, was she grateful for something to lean on. She was exhausted. And she couldn’t wait to change out of this damn gown, hanging in tatters about her knees. There came another catcall, but she forced herself not to listen to it, staring hard at a ratty old Budweiser poster clinging for dear life onto the wall behind the bar. She wasn’t going to be scared. She wasn’t going to be scared.

The bartender emerged suddenly through a squeaking back door and made her jump about a foot in the air. He eyed her ensemble doubtfully and asked coldly, “Can I help?”

Faye’s cheeks flushed pink. “Hi. Just water, please. It’s free, right?”

The bartender gave her a look that said 'you have got to be shitting me'. “This ain’t a soup kitchen, honey. If you ain’t buying anything then get out of here.”

Faye wanted to kick herself. She had been such a formidable force earlier and now she felt worthless again. But before she could say anything else, a voice at her elbow said, “Hey, cool it. I’ll buy the little lady a drink. What can I get ya, baby?”

She jerked her head towards it. The voice belonged to the gold chain guy, who had somehow slid into the stool next to her without her noticing. His hair looked even greasier up close, and he smelled kind of odd, but he didn’t have a bad looking face. That didn’t exactly warm him to her either, but he was offering her a drink. For free.

“Uh.” Faye swallowed. She had no idea what she even liked. She really did want water, but that didn’t seem to be what this guy wanted to hear. She had drunk wine with Whitney, and it had tasted familiar and good to her, so it must have been something she had liked before, but this didn’t look the kind of place that would sell good wine. Or good anything.

She had paused a beat too long, but the guy only grinned and said, “How ‘bout a beer? You look like you could use a nice beer.” The fridge light was making his face look blue. 

“Ok. Yeah. Um, sure.” Her voice sounded silly and stilted. 

The guy didn’t seem to have noticed. He nodded at the bartender. “One Budweiser, please. Extra cold.” He winked and patted the stool next to him. Faye climbed gingerly aboard. She had a bad feeling. This was like Whitney all over again, but even worse. She just really wanted a drink, damn it.

“The name’s Rex, by the way,” he told her, voice purring like a motorcycle. He took a sip of dark amber liquid from the tumbler he had cradled in his large hand. There were illegible tattoos spidering across his fingers. “You can call me T-Rex, if you want.” At this, Faye felt the most inexplicable desire to laugh. Everything else about this situation was completely lacking in humor, but damn if that wasn’t one of the most ridiculous things she had ever heard. Before she could respond and say the wrong thing, the bartender returned with an open bottle of Budweiser.

“’Fraid we’re out of clean glasses,” he apologized roughly. Faye suspected this was a lie, as she still got the impression that he deeply resented her, but she accepted the bottle as graciously as she could.

“So. What about you?” asked T-Rex (she was still trying to stop the corners of her mouth quirking up at that).

“What?”

“Your name.”

“Oh. It’s Faye. Faye Valentine.” She regretted it as soon as she said it, and swore internally. She was an idiot, handing out her full name like there was no tomorrow. What if they came asking about her?

“Pretty name.” She didn’t know what to say to that, and she clutched her cold bottle awkwardly, hovering it just underneath her mouth while T-Rex watched her expectantly. She supposed it was time to take a sip. Raising it to her lips, she took a large slurp, and was pleased to find that the taste suited her just fine, although maybe that was because her mouth was drier than a desert. She was so thirsty it sang like liquid gold in her throat.

Some half an hour later she was feeling considerably less thirsty, and there was a pleasantly warm sensation nestling inside her. The guys from the corner didn’t seem so intimidating anymore. They were old as dirt, and drunk anyway; she doubted they would try anything dangerous. T-Rex was too absurd to even consider a threat. He offered her a swig of his drink and it burned in her throat, tasting like something that could strip away paint, or better than that, her fear. It was terrible stuff, but she liked the sensation because it was terrible in the way that her rage had been. It was that cleansing burning feeling. T-Rex ordered her another glass of her very own, and she knocked it back in close to no time. It made her cough something dreadful, the sound like bullets clattering around in her, but she felt untouchable. She considered T-Rex from the corner of her eye and decided she liked him better than Whitney. At least he made her laugh. Whitney had been so serious all the time, like his idea of some kind of Prince Charming. Ha! 

“Mind if I light up?” T-Rex asked, when he noticed her watching him.

“Go ahead, champ.” She giggled to herself. Champ. Did he even know she was making fun of him? He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and jammed one in his mouth. She declined when he offered another one out to her, aware she might embarrass herself, although she needn’t have worried about that. He was drunk and his fumbling fingers took way too long to figure out the lighter. 

“Sure I can’t tempt you?” he offered again after several puffs. He flicked his ash and leaned in closer. “How about we share?” Now that he was right up in her personal space, she could smell that strange odor again, and she was about to say no when sheer curiosity changed her mind. She reached for the cigarette, right as T-Rex snapped his hand away. Faye was confused, but then he moved his mouth right in front of hers, and she understood. She parted her lips and he breathed the smoke right into her. She wanted to exhale it right away but he was trying to kiss her and it ended up furling out of the sides while his mouth slopped against hers. She definitely wouldn’t be doing this if she was sober, but she wasn’t sober at all and the smoke tasted quite nice so it didn’t even matter that he was bad at kissing. She could tell he was bad at kissing even though the only thing she had to compare it to was Whitney’s technique. There was a lot too much tongue going on here.  
He pulled away and grinned, offering Faye the whole cigarette this time. “You really know what you’re doing, baby,” he purred, right as she inhaled far too deeply and was overwhelmed with a prickly desire to cough up what felt like little shards of her lungs. To make it worse, she was suddenly swimming in a flood of nausea. She forced herself to stay composed and blew the smoke out as elegantly as she could.

“I’m as good as it gets,” she detracted in the flirtiest voice she could muster. She inhaled again, and he leant into her mouth to catch the smoke. Her need to cough was building, and she dug her fingernails into his arm sharply. T-Rex liked this so much that he moaned and kissed her even deeper than before, using his teeth this time. That was definitely not something Whitney had ever done. It was both unpleasant and thrilling at the same time.

“Say,” he murmured, breaking away with a sucking noise like a leech detaching itself, “I’m in the motel right across the street. Howdya like to come back with me and have some fun?”

“Aren’t we already having fun?” rasped Faye, her heart pounding, but the warmth was still cradling her belly, and she felt like a woman who could make a grown man beg. She was that woman. She was Faye Valentine. 

“Is that a no?”

“I didn’t say that. So you want some real fun?” It was floating out of her again, that strange unfamiliar voice like some character from a movie she had seen long ago. “I just don’t know. You don’t seem real sure about that, huh.”

“Sure I’m sure!” T-Rex looked like he was about to start panting. He was even drunker than she was.

“Why don’t you ask me again? So I really know how much you want it.” She stilled her breath. “Why don’t you beg?” 

“Damn, lady. You know I want it.” He tried to touch her face and she pulled away. “Hey. Please.”

“Say it agaiiiin,” Faye trilled, truly amazed at herself. Her body didn’t feel so useless anymore; she felt keenly aware of it, the gown tight against her warm skin. 

“God, please. Please.”

Faye smiled. “That’s more like it.” She let him stroke her hair this time. “Alright, T-Rex. That’s an awful name you’ve got there, by the way, T-Rex. But okay. Let’s go.”

The most thrilling thought she had as he led her to his motel room like an eager dog was that she was getting a free place to stay, and the only thanks she needed to offer in return was to make him beg some more. She felt how pathetic he was as he undressed himself and stumbled around every which way, but she was having so much fun. With Whitney, she had simply lain there, but she was turning the tables now. This guy was so drunk he didn’t notice any of the mistakes she made; she had free reign to mess up and still get whatever she wanted out of him. Thinking over all the other events of the night, it almost frightened her to find what she was capable of. 

When she woke much later, Faye found her head swirling and the alcohol still lingering in her bloodstream like a dense, muggy cloud. She rolled over to peer at the sleeping mound beside her. Even as she waded through the swamp of her hangover to once again unearth the memories of everything that had happened, she couldn’t regret anything. It hadn’t happened to her - it had happened because of her. 

These thoughts were interrupted by what she abruptly spied beyond the edge of the bed, and she had to take a moment to rub away her sleep properly, because it seemed too good to be true. It was just lying there in his open drawer. T-Rex’s gun. The son of a bitch had forgotten to put his gun away properly. She raked her eyes over him disbelievingly, almost disgusted. How could he be so careless with something like that? A gun was so much better than a needle. You could use a gun to do something like… rob a store. 

A store. It would be full of food. Even as she thought it, her stomach yowled its approval. How long since she had last eaten? She had been running on empty. Well, she was already a fugitive. She had nothing to lose, right? She felt confident that she could hold up a store, no problem, especially when she thought about how much she wanted one of those sweet dumpling things with the bean paste (another growl from her stomach). Oh, and there was the cash register, of course. She could practically feel herself grabbing at fistfuls of money. At this idea, she searched the place she would normally store guilt, but found she came up short - as if running a hand through her hair after getting it cut, and feeling only emptiness where it was sliced clean away. How unrecognizable she was from the poor girl waking up in the clinic.  
Mind made up, she reached for the gun, and she noticed what must be the keys to T-Rex’s ship lying there too. This must be her lucky day. Only it wasn’t really luck, because she had done this all herself, had picked on this poor guy dozy enough to leave his possessions strewn about all over the place, and this was her reaping the rewards. She wasn’t exactly proud – no, damn it, she was. She was only doing what Whitney had done to her. It was only fair.

She didn’t think she had time to shower just yet, even though she stank, and she didn’t want any of T-Rex’s gross clothes either, even if they were clean, so the dress had to go back on. And her head really did hurt. But the important thing was that this time yesterday she had been nobody, and today she was Faye Valentine. Now she was glad she had told him her name; it would be her calling card. 

She grabbed the gun and keys, and after a moment’s thought, the pack of cigarettes and the lighter from T-Rex’s pant pocket. She headed for the door, but right before she left she turned round to look one last time at the sleeping figure of the man she had just conned the ever-living hell out of. He looked quite sweet. She felt almost fond of him.

“Sucker,” smirked Faye Valentine, and blew him a kiss.


	6. Chapter 6

"Faye, are you in there? Sweetie, are you okay?"

Faye blinked at her reflection in the bathroom mirror. She’d been having one of those moments where you stared at yourself and even though it looked like you, it was like you were a stranger, or some kind of future version of yourself, watching from the outside. Here she was, in a body that was developing in all kinds of awkward and gangly ways, with dark hair pushed back from a face that was losing puppy fat more rapidly each year. Here she was, more importantly, dressed in mourning, but it didn’t seem like she was really there. When she looked at herself she thought, it’s me, I’m Faye at Grandma’s wake and in a minute I have to go back outside and see my family and be myself. She didn’t feel herself, though. She felt a hundred years old, not fifteen. She hadn’t cried yet even though it was Grandma and she had never known anyone who had died before, because while it looked like this one particular moment in time, they weren’t really all there and it had already happened eons before and it was just a memory. 

“Faye?” It was Mother’s voice from the hallway, muffled behind the door but sounding like the present again, and Faye’s strange feeling lifted from her. “Faye, I know this is hard, but I really need your help right now.” 

Faye pushed out a large sigh she hadn’t realised she was holding, and turned from the mirror. She opened the door to see Mother’s face, grave and immediate. Grave. What a good word for a funeral. Everything felt heavy once again, the way it had been since Grandma’s heart attack.

“Oh, good, sweetie, I’m glad. Thank you.” Mother looked like she was about to hug her, but then she seemed to change her mind and pulled herself upwards, smoothing her skirt neatly against her legs. This was unexpected, as she had been hugging Faye all week. “Alright, I need you to find your father. He’s meant to be down here with everyone and he’s disappeared somewhere – probably to his office – and I don’t have time to look right now because I have to greet everyone and sort out the flowers and everything. Can you do that?” She was speaking to Faye, perhaps for the first time, like her daughter was an adult. It was her gently persuasive voice, which Faye recognized well, but she had never been on the receiving end of it. 

“Do I have to?” she asked quietly, as Mother waved and smiled tightly at Faye’s uncle, who was gesturing from the living room doorway with sheets of papers in his hands. “Why can’t he just stay there if he wants, like always?” It sounded much more bitter than she had intended.

“One moment, please!” called Mother across the hall, and then she looked back at Faye, wearing an expression as unfamiliar as a new dress. “Faye, not today, please. I won’t make you, but I’m asking. Not for me. For Grandma. For your father.”

“For him? He doesn’t deserve it.” 

“Doesn’t he?” Suddenly her voice had lost any trace of its usual velvety tones, and instead it sounded heavy, as if it were a stone that would sink in water. “Alright, Faye. I’m going to be honest with you, so listen. I know how you feel - I know. I have just about had enough with him myself. Your father is, quite frankly, a selfish bastard.” Faye almost choked, but Mother was still talking. “He always has been, and it’s only been getting worse over the years. But you have to understand. His mother is dead. We need to help him now. I am asking you just please, please go and talk to him, because we’re his family and that’s what families do for each other. He has to be here. It’s a hard time for us all, but this is important, and I need to know I can trust you to help. I need you. Okay?” She touched Faye’s shoulder.

“Okay,” whispered Faye, who could not have been more surprised if Mother had sprouted wings and ascended up and out of the window. “I - okay.” 

Mother smiled, and something in her face snapped back to being a charming hostess again. “Good. Thank you. Now I need to go and sort out the eulogy with your uncle.” She paused, and kissed Faye briefly on the cheek. “I love you.” And then she was sweeping gracefully back down the hallway to her guests. 

Faye watched her go, overcome with respect. Mother’s fussing usually got on her nerves, but her attention to detail and care for organization had been holding them all together while Father hid away from all his duties in his office. Mother may have been pale and unwell, but she did it all without a hair out of place. Faye, so awkward in her own skin lately, could only envy this. She trailed up the staircase to her father’s office, but before she got there she slipped into the empty upstairs drawing room, listening to the sounds downstairs and thinking about what she might say to him that he would actually listen to. The only one who had ever really gotten through to him was Mother. And, in her own way, Grandma. Faye plunked on the lowest notes of the grand piano monotonously. She was neither of those women. She and Father didn’t understand one another at all. But she had, dang it, agreed to try.

The door to the office was ajar, which was unusual, but she couldn’t hear anything inside. “Father?” she called tentatively, craning her head round. She had never really been allowed in this room, although she had tried many times as a child - attracted, like any good detective, by the smell of old books and expensive wood. 

Father was seated, or rather, slumped, behind his desk in his plush chair. Faye froze, taken aback. His jacket and tie were draped over the back of the chair and his shirtsleeves rolled up; this was a state of dress far too careless for him. More alarming, however, was the fact that she could tell, even with his face buried in his hands, that he had been crying. He didn’t look up when she stepped into the room, but for this she was glad; she couldn’t think what to do, blanking like she did every time there was a pop quiz in school. Should she hug him? She couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged. She definitely couldn’t remember ever seeing him cry. He was meant to be crying, she supposed, but even so, she was scared.

“Papa?” she said in a very small voice. She must have been about seven when she last called him that. He looked up at this, roughly rubbing at his face with the heel of his hand. “Papa…” Faye tailed off, disturbed by his red-rimmed eyes. They were so small. 

“Faye. Why don’t you - ” he coughed, ironing his crumpled voice into a taut command. “Faye, go downstairs. Help your mother.” 

“You should come with me. It’s Grandma, you’re meant to be down there,” said Faye, straining to sound similarly imposing, but feeling like this whole entire venture was already a failure. She didn’t belong here, in this strange room with this strange crying man. 

“Faye, no. Leave me here. Just for a while.”

“A while?” she asked, indignantly. “You’ve been here for days!” 

“Please don’t shout, Faye.”

“Why not? You won’t ever listen to me!” 

“Not if you shout like that. Especially now.” He ran a hand over his face again, squaring his jaw. “This is your Grandma’s funeral, Faye. Show some respect, to her at least.” 

Now Faye was stepping closer. “Grandma wouldn’t think it was disrespectful,” she said defiantly. “You know that! She wouldn’t want us tiptoeing around like this.” She knew it was true as soon as she said it. “It’s more disrespectful that you’re not there.”

“Don’t be so presumptuous.”

“Grandma was the most presumptuous of us all!” Faye wasn’t actually sure she knew what presumptuous meant, but she had a general idea that it was the kind of willful behavior Father could not abide. He was blinking at her, but he didn’t seem angry now, just sad. 

“You – you’re so much like her,” he said, and when his voice broke, so did Faye’s heart - just a little bit. 

“Oh,” she said softly, because she didn’t know what else to say. She was coming round the edge of the desk. “I’m sorry,” she added awkwardly.

“I – hey, take a look at this.” He was avoiding her gaze, but Father held up a photo that had been resting in front of him on his desk. It was black and white and clearly very old, but for a second Faye thought it was a photograph of herself, because the eyes were exactly hers and the mouth curved in that same bold smile she had in all her school portraits. She took it tenderly in her hand. It was Grandma.

“It’s her at your age,” explained Father, deciding to look straight at Faye to watch her marveling at her doppelganger. “Just before the war.” 

Faye tore her eyes away to match his stare. “Grandma never talked about the war,” she said quietly. Everything around them seemed very still for a moment.

“No. She didn’t like to tell me about it, either. She lost everything, you know. Her entire family. But she put on a brave face, like it never happened.”

“You must have known something about it.”

“Just that we grew up very poor because of it.”

Faye put the photograph back on the table, and her next question wobbled unsteadily, tears threatening to push it right over. “Did everyone in her family die?” She couldn’t believe she hadn’t known about it - but then, the subject of the war had always been fiercely avoided in their family. 

“Yes. When she had me and my brothers – we were all she had. But she was stubborn. She liked to get on with things and never showed if she was afraid. She believed circumstances could always be turned around.” There was a smile in Father’s voice, even amongst the pooling sadness. “Sometimes I think it was wrong for her to pretend her own problems didn’t exist, but she was just so determined for everyone else to have a better future. I never told her thank you. I wouldn’t have this life – I wouldn’t have you – without it.”

“She knew,” said Faye. “She definitely knew.”

There was a much longer stillness this time. Then, “I’m glad you’re like her,” he said, slowly. “She made me so angry, but I should never have… I messed up with you. I should have listened to her. Forgive me. I do… I do love you, Faye-Faye.” Faye-Faye. Only Grandma had ever called her that. There were definite tears in her eyes now. 

“Love you,” she mumbled back, trying not to sound embarrassed. They didn’t do this, either of them. He reached over and patted her in an understanding sort of way, then looked her up and down.

“Look at you. You’re growing up so fast. Faye, my fairy. And your mother, my angel.”

“You should help Mother,” sniffed Faye, standing up straight and looking at him seriously. 

“Yes. I’ve been letting her do everything, haven’t I?” He sighed. “Your mother is quite a woman. You are very lucky to have been raised by her and Grandma.”

Faye smiled. “And you.” She had vowed once to never be like him, but that was a long time ago.

“Well, I don’t know about that. But I’m going to do my best, okay? Oh, you keep this.” He placed the photograph of Grandma back into her hand. “And can I show you something else, before we go downstairs?”

“Okay,” said Faye, discreetly wiping her eyes as Father reached into a draw and pulled out a piece of paper.

“This is for the eulogy. I was going to let your uncle handle it since he’s the eldest, but I wanted to write this one part.” 

Faye looked at the paper and welled up again. He hadn’t written much – he had never been very good at sentiment, although he was trying his best now – but what he had written about Grandma was something she wanted to keep in her heart forever, especially the last line. Faye didn’t think she would ever, ever forget it:

'She was a woman who loved very loudly.'


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Possible trigger warning for depression in this chapter

"Hoo boy, you really are an amateur," Bobby smiled his crocodile smile as he began to gather up the cards. Faye leaned back in her chair and propped her feet up very deliberately on the table, right where he was trying to arrange them back in the deck. Bobby had been calling her an amateur for the past two months, at the end of every game she had tried to play, pronouncing it with such relish it made her feel like a particularly succulent meal. Which, damn it all to hell, she supposed she was, once again.

"Hand me my drink," she said sourly, as Bobby pointedly lifted up her stiletto-clad feet and swung them back to the floor. The shoes were murder on her ankles, but part of the uniform. The rest of which was not exactly comfortable leisurewear either. All the cocktail waitresses at the Xanadu Pleasure Dome casino were required to lever themselves into little red numbers which could not accurately be described as dresses because they lacked the material that would normally constitute such a garment. It was also more profitable in terms of tips to go bra-less, but while it was something her average customer might enjoy, shaking a Martini in this state of undress was just painful enough that she never felt the slightest bit glamorous. It just made her grumpy, so that as soon as her shift finished, she would hobble over to where Bobby was dealing to some poor clueless soul and decide this time she was going to actually win something. At which point she herself would be donning the role of poor clueless soul, which, it was unfortunately emerging, fit her far better than the uniform. 

Bobby, still smiling, slid over her drink, the ice cubes tinkling merrily. Faye downed it in one aggressive movement, which was a bad idea because the glass clashed painfully against her teeth. She craned her neck back to glare up at the garish gold stucco on the ceiling. Her head felt like it was being set in cement. "I can't stand this! I never get any better." 

"You're too damn impatient," said Bobby wisely. He had been a dealer since the time of the dinosaurs (his long wrinkled neck made Faye suspect he was one - in fact, everything about him was positively reptilian) and had learned every trick of the trade since. It was impossible to win if you played against him. So of course she kept doing it. Faye was nothing if not stubborn. 

"Cheating is meant to make it easier," she complained. In her experience, both honesty and patience were values that were not worth bothering with. 

"I'm not about to reveal all my secrets to you, am I, eh? You gotta learn to make do with what I given you so far." Bobby raised one of the snowy clumps of hair that were his eyebrows. "Besides. Better me teaching you slowly like this than letting you drown out there on your lonesome. Right?" Until recently, Bobby had been using Faye as bait for guests trying to scam the casino. He would sit her in the hot seat, and she was so clearly an easy target that they would let their guard down, unaware Bobby was watching from afar. His sense was so good he could sometimes spot them from a table across the room. Thankfully, he had now grown bored of watching Faye helplessly flapping around all the time. He had decided he liked playing God better, and was offering her 'a taste from the tree of knowledge' (his words, not hers - to her it sounded like an unwelcome innuendo). The fruits of which were all rotten to the core. The Pleasure Dome was what he affectionately referred to as a 'bustout joint'; the only dealers employed here were those who knew how to cheat guests out of their money every which way. Even the slot machines were rigged. 

Faye sat back up and adjusted her wedgie, mumbling her assent. At least she was learning something this way.

Bobby's smile changed from predatory to pitying.

"Looky here. Listen now - you ain't a bad kid. I mean, you're bad, but that's why I like you. You and me, we're birds of a feather. One day you'll get it. You keep going and you'll get it." 

"Gee, thanks Grand-poppy!" said Faye, looking at his liver spots and feeling spiteful. "I sure am grateful. Now tell me a bedtime story." 

"I'm serious." He ran his fingers idly over the deck. "One day you'll live up to that name of yours, Alice." Faye had given it as her name when she came here, as a precautionary measure since she had planned on actually sticking around for a bit while she earned some cash (robbing stores had turned out to be a little risky in the end). On her way in she had heard the name 'Poker Alice' whispered in reverential tones and decided on the latter part as her pseudonym. So far she had done little to earn the full accolade, but Bobby seemed serious that she had the potential to do so after all. He pulled a card out of the deck. It appeared to be at random, but when he pressed it into her hand she saw it was the ace of spades."You keep that now," he winked, and Faye would have been touched if he hadn't looked so much like a creepy great uncle. She tucked the card into her cleavage, the only storage space handy, and winked leerily back at him. 

"I'll do you proud," she said, lacing the words with sarcasm, and Bobby laughed. Faye did not join in. She felt like having a bath. Perhaps she could squeeze one in before her break ended.

"Catch you later?" said Bobby as she stood up gingerly and teetered at the edge of the table, concentrating on not breaking her ankles. She muttered something noncommittal, regained her balance and headed for the elevators - no mean feat in her ensemble. 

In the elevator she could see herself reflected over and over in the mirrors and shiny gilt paneling, her own pale face swimming out at her like a stranger. Her eyes were dull and indistinct, framed by dusty black make-up that had smudged and faded over the course of the day. She looked like she could have been there a hundred years. It was always so dark in the casino that you had no idea what time of day it was. There were no clocks so it was feasible to spend days in there without even noticing. 

When she had first arrived, the Pleasure Dome's owner and her future boss had told her how he chose the name from a poem by some opium-addled guy who had dreamed of a mysterious land called Xanadu and had been interrupted by the doorbell or something before he could finish it. Faye felt like she was in a dream, and she was more than ready for someone to come and wake her up. Music that was meant to sound vaguely Middle Eastern trickled tinnily out from the speakers. She hated it here. She hated being in one place for too long. 

Faye had not really come here out of choice, but it had been easy enough at first. She had nothing to lose. Her 'job interview' had consisted of her being bent (albeit unceremoniously) over a desk, smug at how she could get her own way so simply. Men thought they were controlling her because she would be whatever they wanted her to be, but they didn't see that they were turning her into their own weakness. Dominating men had been a fun power trip at first, but she preferred making them work for her without them even realizing it. So they looked at her like Tom looked at Jerry. Good. Jerry came up trumps every episode. All the men she had met got that same look around her, as if they were evolving backwards, and then she had them in the palm of her hand. It was like what Bobby had taught her about Poker; even if you had a bad hand it didn't matter because it wasn't a game of luck, you just had to be able to read your opponents and exploit that. After that you just had to make sure you got out before they inevitably tried to take it back from you. 

She hadn't got out, though. She'd let herself get stuck in this place, convincing herself each day it would be different. How could it be? Everyone here was just as rotten as she was. Everywhere she went people were rotten. And even if they weren't, she wanted them to be. It really pissed her off that anyone could survive in this dog eat dog world without having to get their hands dirty. 

Faye reached her floor and stepped out of the elevator, negotiating for space with that one large potted fern, her nemesis, which always got in her way, every damn time. She had been paying for a room in the hotel rather than living out of her tiny ship, but she couldn't exactly afford the penthouse suite, and the place was shitty anyway. The corridors were too narrow and the decor appalling. She slapped halfheartedly at the walls as she walked towards her room. She couldn't even spread her arms out fully. God, she wanted to leave, but where would she go? She would be sad and alone wherever she went. 

Opening the door to her room and surveying its darkened interior, Faye felt the blues settle in her even deeper. She made a mental inventory of all the possessions inside: one gun; one small case of clothes and toiletries; a paper bag containing a half-eaten pastry; a few (okay, more than a few) empty bottles; a pair of sunglasses with a missing frame; a dented lighter and matching crushed pack of cigarettes; the keys to her ship; a couple of lottery scratch-cards (scratched, utterly useless). And, finally, one pitifully thin wallet. Everything she owned. She pulled the card from her cleavage and placed it on her bedside table to add to the list. There. Living like a queen. 

By the time she had run a bath her break was long over, but she didn't care anymore because the water was dark and cool and it was so easy to just slip away underneath its velvety embrace. Sometimes she felt like the whole universe was pressing in on her, and instead of barreling through life fists first, she should just accept it, because what was the use in fighting something you couldn't even see? Oh, but you could feel it down here underwater, or up amongst the stars, in the gaping silence of outer space. It didn't look or sound like anything; it was absence itself. It was what was there before the Big Bang. It was an emptiness that you felt seeping into you. These days her insides usually felt either hard as scar tissue, all over, or like nothing at all. She didn't know what was worse, but sometimes she let herself relish in the latter because it didn't take any work. She was so tired of working, of fighting, of running. What was the point of running from shit when all that was ahead was more shit - why not let it just become you? 

The only trouble was, it was so empty, and she couldn't help but ache at that. Deep in her bones, she was still a selfish thing, made of wanting. There was still something clawing for a way out, always keeping her going. Her selfishness was an ugly thing, but it kept her alive, because she could not ever be satisfied with that kind of nothingness. Faye punched her head up through the water's surface, gasping for air. Nobody was coming to wake her up from her nightmare, so she was going to do it herself or die trying. She slithered out of the bath, wrapped herself in a towel and sat herself cross legged on the bed, thinking about how far she had come already and pushing away any doubts from her mind that she could do it all on her own. Her heart felt hard again, which couldn't be healthy, but at least she could feel it was there. Faye Valentine was made of the tough stuff. 

As she began to get ready she felt her resolve grow even more. She rubbed away her old eye make-up and knew she wasn't going to stay. It felt good to take care of herself, smoothing on a fresh coat of make-up and stepping back into her own clothes, instead of wriggling into that uniform like she was wrestling an anaconda. Her shorts were her own brand of sexy; plenty of room for running in, for a start. She left her lipstick for last because the bright red made her smile every time. It was the colour of STOP on a traffic light.

Fully dressed, she began packing her meager possessions. She would hit the road and drive until morning broke, when she would use part of her remaining cash (too bad about missing her next pay check) to treat herself to a huge breakfast. After that she had no idea, but even just thinking about the open road made her heart feel like it had a space to be filled (and her stomach could be filled by the breakfast). She saw the ace card from the corner of her eye and decided maybe Bobby was right. She would go to another casino, then the next, then the next, until she was good enough to be Poker Alice, and then she would keep going after that too. There had to be something out there for her, and whatever it was, she wanted it. She was going to get it. 

“Alright,” she said to the empty room, as she zipped her gun into the top of her bag. “Let’s blow this joint.”


End file.
